The Newsletter April 2024

Issue #13: We're looking at home espresso brewing, women produced coffee and Oeuf Cafe in Hove.

Our Stores: 28 Sydney Street

Brewing espresso at home:

 Are you one of these adventurous home-brewers trying to put us out of business with your fancy new home-friendly mini espresso machines? Good for you. Want some tips? I bet you do.

Firstly, don't stress, you're not a terrible barista. It's just quite hard to make good espresso on a home machine. That's probably not what you want to hear after spending upwards of £700 (exc VAT) on a coffee maker that looks so shiny, straight outta the box.

When making filter coffee at home, your margin for error can be extremely high, depending on your equipment. For example, if you're using a cafetière, a few scoops per person, and as long as you're putting in ground coffee and hot water, you should get on just fine. This is not the case with espresso.

Espresso brewing takes on a journey of flavour extraction which requires stricter variable controlling, and even once you think you've nailed it, you can still find it falls short, even if you're brewing expertly roasted coffee.

This journey refers to the different flavours extracted at different intervals during a brew. We can break these down into 3 flavour extraction stages:

5-10 seconds - Sour flavours

10-15 seconds - Sugary, sweet flavours

15-30 seconds - Bitter flavours

Only when all three flavours are equally extracted will you achieve what's called the 'sweet spot', or a 'balanced espresso'. But brewing a balanced espresso requires a solid recipe.

Recipe:

Brewing is all about ratios, right? The OG espresso ratio is coffee 1:2 water.

E.g. if you're using 17g of coffee, you're going to want about 34g of espresso (yield).

Extraction time is also important, for a brew with these variables, you'll want about 25 seconds of brewing to achieve the sweet spot.

You achieve your brewing time of 25 seconds by grinding your coffee fine enough. Remember that the finer you grind coffee, the longer the water will take to flow through the coffee bed. Reversely, the coarser you make your coffee grinds, the quicker the water will flow.

It's all about playing around with your grinder/grind size until you can achieve the weight, yield and extraction time desired - and then tasting your coffee to see if your recipe is suitable for the beans you've purchased,

If it still doesn't taste right, try altering your recipe slightly. E.g. if your coffee tastes sour, brew for longer than 25 seconds but don't change the other variables. If your coffee is tasting too bitter, try reducing your desired brew-time.

Lever vs machine:

If you want to simplify your espresso-making at home, buy a lever espresso-maker instead, It's easier to use, gives you more control over extraction, is low maintenance and requires less parts.

It will bend and break over a long time, become inefficient if used with too much force, but will be less stressful. You will achieve less pressure from a lever but most of them can get up to 9 bars initially, before returning to between 3-5 at the end of the brew.

Coffee Preferences:

If you have a preference in roast profile for your coffee, it's important to remember some general advices; lighter roasted coffee tends to be more exciting on filter methods, darker roasted coffee leans towards more pleasant flavours on espresso. If you're a big fan of lighter roasts, and more sweet and complex brews, it may be a tall order to find a great and balanced espresso on a home espresso machine.

We're lucky enough to have control over our purchasing at the Pelicano roastery. We've established ourselves as a trendy local brand, sometimes popping up around the UK in different speciality coffee shops retail shelves.

So now that we're on the market, our faces recognised and style noted, it's time to push on and take responsibility for the impact our investing has through our green coffee purchasing. We do still purchase from regional programs, micro-lots and smallholder groups. But this year we've set a target to purchase a minimum 30% from women-owned farms/projects for our limited edition retail coffees. But why?

Local economies:

When countries invest in women, the economy benefits.

Professional empowerment benefits whole communities. More jobs for women result in local and national economic growth, and reducing fertility rates in areas at risk of overpopulation reduces poverty and resource scarcity.

More women in decision-making roles:

Women make up 70% of the global coffee production workforce, but less than a third of all coffee farms are female-led according to a recent International Coffee Organisation (ICO) report.

Buying from women-owned farms increases their value and therefore importing countries' desire for more. Ideally leading to NGOs and local community projects investing more into women-led projects and hiring women into decision-making roles in coffee farms.

Some of the most effective programs in regards to reducing the gender gap in the coffee growing industry happens at a grass roots level, though. So hopefully if we can grow our business in the UK, we will be able to invest more in female owned businesses in coffee-growing communities with a more hands on and direct relationship in mind. 

Wholesale partners: Oeuf Cafe

Open since 2020, Oeuf Cafe has made itself a culinary landmark in Hove.

With their eclectic menu ranging from bespoke 'frumpets', to all the brunch classics such as breakfasts, Eggs Bennie and vegetarian & vegan alternatives, we're so excited and proud to be able to collaborate with these beautiful people on their own coffee.

They have been an active part of the sourcing process to find a flavour profile which compliments their food and service. The Oeuf blend consists of a natural Brazil 60% and washed Colombia 40%. Milk Chocolate, Praline and Lemon are it's tasting notes and they'll be serving it on espresso from April 2024.

You can also buy their retail bags in-store.

Location: 8 Third Ave, Brighton and Hove, Hove BN3 2PX